The Planets at the Grand Rapids Symphony

DeVos Performance Hall

February 2, 2018 - 8:00pm

Join us for an evening with The Planets and Bell's Brewery with the Grand Rapids Symphony. This promises to be an amazing evening of music paired with inspsired brews. Tickets range from $18 to $95.

That great Frank Sinatra standard Fly Me To The Moon hovers over this inventive program as Marcelo Lehninger offers a Haydn rarity to start. Though we know and love ‘Papa Haydn’ for his 104 symphonies, he was also a prolific opera composer. Haydn was no match for his young friend Mozart in the world of opera, but this charming comedy about a bogus astronomer was probably the first science fiction opera! The overture bubbles along in true opera buffa style.

And speaking of Mozart, his final symphony acquired its planetary nickname only after the composer’s death, probably from Haydn’s good friend, the impresario Joann Peter Salomon. With its majesty, playfulness and sheer brilliance, the Jupiter Symphony is best summed up by Woody Allen’s character in his film Manhattan when he says: "the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony is one of the things that makes life worth living."

The greatest celestial exploration in music ends these concerts as Gustav Holst’s The Planets takes us around much of our solar system. However, you will find no evocations of the rings of Saturn or the mists of Mars. Holst used the personalities ascribed to the planets by the ancients to evoke his planetary tone poems and so we have Mars, The Bringer of War and Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity instead!